The monstering of Gary Lineker
It’s been exactly two months since Israel unilaterally broke the ceasefire that it agreed to. Since then, it’s killed over three thousand people. It continues to illegally starve the entire Gaza Strip. All of this sets the stage for Operation Gideon’s Chariots. Its planners claim that “Gaza will be entirely destroyed,” which will push Palestinians to “leave in great numbers to third countries.”
Gary Lineker opposes all of this. He embodies a bog standard, middle of the road British sentiment on Gaza. Lineker, like 3 in 4 Britons:
Believes that Israel is committing war crimes.
Supports an immediate unconditional ceasefire.
Opposes Israel’s plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza.
Every polling indicator is trending against Israel. Indeed, Lineker is actually much friendlier to the pariah state than the next generation of celebrities will be. Most young people in the UK don’t even believe that Israel should exist.
Lineker is, politically speaking, the median British dad. But our media is so warped that an ex-footballer, who just hates kids being killed, is being presented as a militant. A right-wing smear campaign has attacked Lineker for standing up for immigrants and making fun of the Tories. It kicked into overdrive when he had the gall to say:
I can’t bear looking at little children being killed constantly.
It finally got him this week when Lineker stupidly re-posted an Instagram story about the history of Zionism. The content itself was sound, but a previous re-poster had overlaid an image of a rat, an anti-Semitic trope. Lineker apologised:
I shared a post here on Instagram that contained an emoji that has awful connotations. Unfortunately, I did not see the emoji. If I had, I would never ever have shared it.
The minute I was made aware, I deleted the post and went on to make an apology. I would like once again to say I’m sorry unreservedly for the hurt and upset caused. It was a genuine mistake and oversight, but I should have been more diligent.
He’s right. He should’ve been more careful. It was an accident, but a disastrously reckless one. It’s okay to have average-dad politics, but average-dad social media judgment isn’t suited to such a scrutinised role.
The British press loves two things: a fallen celebrity and a chance to criticise the BBC. So, they’ve jumped on this story. What the press haven’t done is inform their audience about the dodgy backgrounds of the campaigners demanding Lineker’s head. Let’s do their job for them.
Who are Lineker’s critics?
Nicole Lampert
Telegraph journalist Nicole Lampert is a longstanding critic of Lineker. She thinks that the N-word is free speech and once wrote a eulogy for a Sun journalist who'd killed his wife. She’s very critical of rat imagery, except when she employs it herself. She’s far from the only Telegraph writer to compare people to vermin.
In her column Lampert writes:
Who else would not only be allowed a whacking great salary, but to set up a media company which is a rival to the BBC?
You’re getting sidetracked Nicole, this was supposed to be about antisemitism. But, as you asked, the obvious comparison would be Robbie Gibb. Gibb is Theresa May’s former spin doctor and was a Tory-appointed BBC director. He now holds a non-executive director role on the BBC’s Board. Gibb purchased the Jewish Chronicle, a right-wing newspaper that regularly attacks Lineker and the BBC, on behalf of an anonymous consortium.
As is the case with many of Lineker’s critics, Lampert’s argument amounts to: do as we say, not as we do.
David Atherton
Right-wing activist David Atherton decried Lineker’s “online radicalisation”. This is a bit rich from the man who falsely claimed that a Palestinian immigrant committed the murder that caused last year's Southport riots. Atherton’s pre-riot incitement reached 2.4 million people on Twitter alone. He also shared this shockingly racist image of Lineker, shown as a brown-faced Muslim with rat ears. Nicole Lampert thanked Atherton for his support.
Euan Philipps
Euan Philipps is a pro-Israel campaigner. He’s not Jewish, so he sometimes adopts a Jewish pseudonym to lend faux-semitic credence to his complaints. His group, Labour Against Antisemitism, took a break from filing antisemitism complaints against Jewish members of the Labour Party to attack Lineker. The anti-Palestinian bigotry of some of the organisation’s founders has seen them kicked off of social platforms.
Josh Howie
GB News broadcaster Josh Howie is another of Lineker’s critics. He deplores dehumanising animal imagery, apart from when he’s using it himself. Howie spreads the Pallywood conspiracy theory. He claims that crisis actors are faking the horrors they're experiencing in Gaza. He once looked at an image of a dead Palestinian child and declared that it was actually a silicone doll.
Jake Wallis Simons
Jake Wallis Simons is another Telegraph columnist. He has a history of making false allegations about Muslim groups. He took a break from tweeting stuff like “Much of Muslim culture is in the grip of a death cult that sacralizes bloodshed” to accuse Lineker of bigotry.
These are not serious people. They are opportunists enabled by a British press that’s too cozy and too right-wing to take them to task. They have found a win-button and they are going to continue mashing that button until it stops delivering the outcome that they want.
The smear campaign against people who see Palestinians as people is far bigger than Lineker. It’s targeted actors, athletes, activists, directors, MPs, journalists and more. Most recently it claimed that beloved children's entertainer and educator Ms. Rachel was funded by Hamas. The campaign is so shameless and scattershot that it once labelled a journalist a terrorist on the grounds that he happened to be born on October 7th, long before the events of 2023.
Lineker made a mistake and apologised, but his critics are unapologetic repeat offenders. It's obvious from everything he has said on a wide range of issues that he’s is driven by compassion for suffering. He has paid a huge, escalating and entirely predictable price for his dissent.
I point all of this out to drive home a simple point: the price of opposing Israel’s genocide is far too high in Britain. And the price of being an Islamophobic wingnut is far too low. If we want peace and justice, we need to balance the scales.